Attached Link: http://www.bpib.com/illustrat/bauer.htm

"Lawn garden gnomes" are nothing like the Scandinavian ones. They bear as much resemblance to the creatures of myth and folklore as does the "lawn garden negro boy" holding the ring for hitching your horse does to anybody who actually was enslaved on a plantation. Plastic, plastic, plastic! (Except for the ones made of resin by the copycat firm.) If you are going to collect source material and post it several times all over the threads, please be more discriminating in your research! Illustrators who possess skill and imagination have been drawing trolls, gnomes, fairies, and dwarves for a couple of centuries. John Bauer is one of my favorite such artists (I must have acquired his Swedish Fairy Tales soon after printing, and immediately recognized his influence upon Brian Froud (another favorite)). This link is to an article about him, and includes links to other artists of the time and genre. He created a lot of trolls, but also painted the other demihumans. And this link leads to a nice page about trolls, some of whom are nicer than humans. "As honest as a troll" is an ancient Viking proverb... because they were. They didn't lie and were intolerant of falsehood... so I'd hate to be around one seeing his plastic "replica"! http://users.skynet.be/fa023784/links.html Carolly